Born this day in 1864 – Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish philosopher and author (d. 1936). He was author of "The Tragic Sense of Life."

Read Tragic Sense of Life

"Unamuno was an early existentialist who concerned himself largely with the tension between intellect and emotion, faith and reason. At the heart of his view of life was his personal and passionate longing for immortality. "- Britannica 

"Unamuno's philosophy was not systematic but rather a negation of all systems and an affirmation of faith "in itself." He developed intellectually under the influence of rationalism and positivism … " – Wikipedia

"It is sad not to be loved, but it is much sadder not to be able to love."

"It has often been said that every man who has suffered misfortunes prefers to be himself, even with his misfortunes, rather than to be someone else without them."

"Man sees, hears, touches, tastes and smells that which it is necessary for him to see, hear, touch, taste and smell in order to preserve his life."

"Is pure thought possible, without consciousness of self, without personality? Can there exist pure knowledge without feeling, without that species of materiality which feelings lends to it?"

"The vain man is in like cause with the avaricious — he takes the mean for the end; forgetting the end he pursues the means for its own sake and goes no further. The seeming to be something, conducive to being it, ends by forming our objective. We need that others should believe in our superiority to them in order that we may believe in it ourselves, and upon their belief base our faith in our own persistence, or at least in the persistence of our fame. We are more grateful to him that congratulates us on the skill with which we defend a cause than we are to him who recognizes the truth or goodness of the cause itself. A rabid mania for originality is rife in the modern intellectual world and characterizes all individual effort. We would rather err with genius than hit the mark with the crowd."

"My idea of God is different each time that I conceive it. Identity, which is death, is the goal of the intellect. The mind seeks what is dead, for what is living escapes it."

"To believe in God is to yearn for His existence and, furthermore, it is to act as if He did exist."

"The attacks which are directed against religion from a presumed scientific or philosophical point of view are merely attacks from another but opposing religious point of view."

"Love personalizes all that it loves. Only by personalizing it can we fall in love with an idea."

"This Consciousness of the Universe, which a love, personalizing all that it loves, discovers, is what we call God."

"The knowledge of God proceeds from the love of God, and this love has little or nothing of the rational in it. For God is indefinable."

"Faith is an act of the will — it is a movement of the soul towards a practical truth, towards a person, towards something that makes us not merely comprehend life, but that makes us live."

"Act so that in your own judgment and in the judgment of others you may merit eternity, act so that you may become irreplaceable, act so that you may not merit death."